Six Things
by Namaste
Summary: Six things that Lisa Cuddy is not and six things that Lisa Cuddy is. A Cuddy character story using two sets of six drabbles. Spoilers for Forever, Who's Your Daddy and No Reason.


_Lisa Cuddy does not feel guilty._

She knows that's what everyone thinks: that she created the diagnostics department and hired House because she felt responsible for his leg, his limp, his pain.

She didn't cause the infarction. She was the one who recommended debriding in the first place. It was House who made the jump from there to amputation and ignored her earlier advice. It was House who delayed the second surgery with his insistence that restoring the blood flow would be enough. It was House who said he could ride out the pain.

It was House who trusted Stacy.

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_Lisa Cuddy does not feel pity._

Not for House, anyway. For his patients, almost always.

Some of them are beyond hope by the time they reach him. They've been passed from one specialist to another, their symptoms shrugged off either as side effects of their medication or charted as "idiopathic," with no further investigation done. Some never make it home.

Others merely make the mistake of showing up at the clinic at the wrong time.

"Listen up. You don't have the bird flu!" She heard House's raised voice and closed her office door. "None of you do. Now go home!"

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_Lisa Cuddy does not feel jealous._

She's seen the looks passed between House and Wilson, the way they can make one another smile without saying a word.

She knows Wilson has a tough specialty, she knows the extra hours that he puts in with the board and on committees. She knows about Julie. But she also knows House will make sure he relaxes -- probably call him an idiot, then force him into pulling some ridiculous stunt.

She has friends, people who are good company, who will tell her she is wonderful, who can make her laugh.

But Wilson has House.

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_Lisa Cuddy isn't a bad boss._

She didn't expect much from the assistants passing through her outer office. The job hasn't paid well since she cut her own budget to help finance the third fellowship in diagnostics.

Stephen James left the day he heard a triple murderer was being treated upstairs. Leona Simpson refused to use the computer after House told her about how germs could lurk in keyboards. Doris Peters fainted at the sight of blood on an ER doctor's scrubs.

Maybe if she increased the salary, she thought, then someone might stick around for more than two weeks.

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_Lisa Cuddy is not lonely._

She has seen her sisters married. Seen them through childbirth. She brought a cake to her nephew's bris.

She has been in love. She's had her heart broken. She's moved on.

She's told herself and everyone else that her career was enough for now, that she'd settle down when the time was right, when she found the right man.

She's started to think that maybe there is no right man, but the idea of a child feels right, like nothing else ever has -- except maybe medicine. And maybe medicine can make this right thing happen.

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_Lisa Cuddy is not scared._

She doesn't have time for fear. She doesn't have time to think about the fact that someone entered her hospital, and fired two shots into House.

She ordered the clinic shut down when she heard gunfire. Security is telling her they've cornered the gunman. She'll have to decide what to tell patients, family, the media.

She gives herself just a moment to look into the ER where House's team works alongside the trauma doctors. Princeton-Plainsboro has the best trauma team in the state. She created it to be the best. She has to trust them.

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_Lisa Cuddy is beautiful_

A third of the students in her class were women. Her first attending was a woman. But even then, decisions were still made by a boy's club. She knew that, but refused to change her style just to meet whatever demands they might have -- to be either more demure or more alluring.

She was up against three men when the post opened at Princeton-Plainsboro. She knew she had the strongest qualifications, the best CV.

She told herself that if the committee couldn't see that, then PPTH wasn't the right place for her. Not then, not ever.

-------

_Lisa Cuddy is brilliant_

In pre-med, then medical school, every doctor is exposed to the intricate mechanisms that make up the human body. The balance of muscles and bone, of veins and arteries, of reason and understanding.

But it takes more than the rote memorization of facts to make a doctor -- and she is a very good doctor. She can run down the list of her academic achievements and honors. She has a file in her desk of cards she has received from the people whose lives she once saved.

By hiring House, she knew she had saved even more.

-------

_Lisa Cuddy is strong_

She learned to volley playing against her father on the concrete courts at the school. He taught her to hit shots that kept her opponents running across the court, wearing them out before the first set was over.

She learned how to read her opponents' body language, to know where they planned to send the ball when she was receiving, so she was ready for anything that came her way.

When House walked into her office, he had a look of pure innocence on his face, and she braced herself for whatever was about to come.

-------

_Lisa Cuddy is kind_

Chase rarely came to her office. Usually it's Foreman or Cameron with complaints about House's actions, so when she saw Chase, she expected something serious.

It's not about House, he claimed. He knew Miller would be taking two weeks off, and his department could use an extra pair of hands.

"NICU isn't exactly a vacation destination," she said.

He agreed, then added he was considering career alternatives after his fellowship with House ended.

She knew he wasn't telling her everything, but studied him as he sat there, and decided he could keep his secrets for now.

-------

_Lisa Cuddy is organized_

She cleaned off her desk every night, placing every paper into into its proper file, each file into its correct drawer. It was the only way she had found keep track of everything happening within a teaching hospital.

She has to be able to turn her focus in an instant from patients to med students, from personnel issues to the latest treatments.

House disrupted everything, his issues spreading themselves across every neat division she had created -- scaring the students, pissing off the staff and now asking her for a treatment no one there had ever considered.

-------

_Lisa Cuddy is determined._

All they have is the study, but Wilson spoke with one of the doctors in Germany who provided them with more information, as long as his name is never mentioned if something goes wrong.

The ketamine treatment has never been done here, but House has never done things according to the rules.

She knows he's been in pain for years and that it's been getting worse. The treatment puts him at risk, puts PPTH at risk, puts them all at risk.

But he's asked her for this, and this is one thing she will give him.


End file.
